This might be showing my age, but those who may have watched Not Necessarily the News in the 80s might remember the Sniglets segment that Rich Hall pioneered which spawned a series of short, fun books. Sniglets are words which are not in the dictionary, but which should be. I can remember a couple of examples from years ago that make the point — aquadexterity is the ability to operate bathtub dials with one’s feet; cheedle is the orange residue left on one’s fingers after eating a bag of Cheetos.

As is the case with many companies, we have made up some of our own words over the years at Return Path - think of them as Corporate Sniglets. I’m sure we have more than these, but here are a few that we use internally:

Underlap is the opposite of Overlap. My colleague Tom Bartel coined this gem years ago when he was leading the integration work on an acquisition we did, as in “let’s look for areas of Overlap as well as areas of Underlap (things that neither companies does, but which we should as a combined company).”

Pre-Mortem or Mid-Mortem are the timing opposites of Post-Mortem. We do Post-Mortems religiously, but sometimes you want to do one ahead of a project to think about what COULD go wrong and how to head those things off at the pass, or in the middle of a project to course-correct on it. I believe my colleague George Bilbrey gets credit for the Pre-Mortem, and I think I might have come up with Mid-Mortem.

Frontfill is the opposite of Backfill. While you Backfill a position after an employee leaves, you can Frontfill it if you know someone is going to leave to get ahead of the curve and make sure you don’t have a big gap without a role being filled. Credit to Mike Mills for this one

RPers, are there others I’m missing? Anyone else have any other gems from other companies?

To follow up on last week’s post about the two types of entrepreneurs, I hear from people all the time that they can’t be an entrepreneur because they’re not creative. I used to say that myself, but Mariquita reminds me periodically that that’s nonsense…and as a case in point, I didn’t have the original idea that gave birth to Return Path James Marciano did. And I didn’t have the original idea to create a deliverability business, George Bilbrey did. Or an inbox organizer consumer application, Josh Baer did.

But I still consider myself an entrepreneur as the founder and leader of the company, as it takes a lot of creativity and business building acumen to get from an idea to a business, or from a small business to a big business.

Sure, you can invent something from scratch. Someone created the first car. The first computer. The first telephone. Harnessed the power of electricity for home/commercial use. The first deliverability service or inbox organizer. George and others will say you can create a process for this…but I think it’s a bit like lightening striking.

But sometimes the best ideas are ones that are borrowed from others or combined from other sets of existing things. There’s nothing wrong with that! And you can do this without stealing intellectual property. For example, I took a ton of business trips my first few years out of college with a heavy duffel bag that caused a pinched nerve in my shoulder. Then someone decided to put wheels, a relatively old and stable technology, on suitcases about 15 years ago. Hallelujah.

UPDATE: This week’s Economist has an interesting article that fits right into this discussion. It’s called In Praise of Misfits, and its telling subtitle is something like “Why business needs people with dyslexia, ADD, and Asperger’s.” A great read on this theme.

Every senior management team needs a CPO and a COO. No, I’m not talking about Privacy and Operations. I’m talking about Paranoia and Optimism. On my leadership team at Return Path, many of us are Paranoid and many of us are Optimistic, and many of us can play both roles. But I’m fortunate to have two business partners who are the Chiefs – George Bilbrey is our Chief Paranoia Officer, and Anita Absey is our Chief Optimism Officer. Those monikers fit their respective roles (product and sales) as well as their personalities.

My view is simple – both traits are critical to have around the management table, and they’re best when they’re in some kind of equilibrium. Optimism keeps you running forward in a straight line. The belief that you can successfully execute on your plan, with a spring in your step and a smile on your face, is very motivating. Paranoia keeps you looking around corners. It may also keep you awake at night, but it’s the driving force for seeing potential threats to the business that aren’t necessarily obvious and keeping you on your toes. I wrote about the benefits and limits of paranoia (with an extreme example) years ago here.

Too much of either trait would be a disaster for a team’s psyche. But both are critical points of view that need a loud voice in any management discussion. It’s a little bit like making sure your management team knows its actual and target location along the Fear/Greed Continuum.